An MLB team spent at least $500,000 for a supercomputer

As technology plows forward, smart MLB front offices follow in its wake, working to take advantage of new innovations to better understand and make use of the increasingly huge spate of information we have about the sport.

One MLB team has invested in a Cray supercomputer according to Pete Ungaro, the company’s chief executive officer. The team, which declines to be named, exemplifies an organisation that, five years ago, most people would not have dreamed would need, or even want, a supercomputer, he says.

The team obtained one both because the machine has the capacity to analyse enormous quantities of data and because of the short time in which it can process them. Other technologies, such as cloud computing, could wade leisurely through information, helping managers make choices during the off-season (perhaps concerning which players to add to the roster, for example). Instead, a team can use a supercomputer to process data in time to affect decisions during play, explains Mr Ungaro. Cray’s Urika appliance, launched two years ago, is specifically designed to help users interpret data in unusual ways.

It’s fun — if pointless — to speculate which club went full Cray-cray. The Rays and A’s are the usual suspects when it comes to innovation, but both are seemingly eliminated by the hint that “most people would not have dreamed” of the club in question buying a supercomputer five years ago.

On top of that, it’s fascinating to consider the ways in which a team might use a supercomputer for in-game analysis. Certainly more data has helped teams make better use of platoons and defensive shifts, but are there real-time elements only a supercomputer would recognize that could improve game strategy? It doesn’t exactly require supercomputing to suggest that many MLB managers frequently call for bunts to the mathematical detriment of their teams.

At the very least, someone’s trying something new. Maybe it works and one shrewd club adds “00110101110” to its list of retired numbers after winning the World Series in 2014. Or maybe everything goes haywire and it ends in a HAL 9000 scenario.

Or maybe they’ll just set it up in the clubhouse so players can watch cat videos and play Candy Crush on there.

As technology plows forward, smart MLB front offices follow in its wake, working to take advantage of new innovations to better (…)

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